Hannah Murray: Entropicana

H A N N A H M U R R AY

EN TROPICANA

A mantle of attainment 2020 Acrylic on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 83 x 115 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

Publisher Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Townsville City Council PO Box 1268 Townsville City, Queensland, 4810 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au ©Galleries, Townsville City Council, and respective artists and authors, 2020 ISBN: 978-0-949461-46-9 Published on the occasion of Hannah Murray: Entropicana Artist Hannah Murray Publication and Design Development Tara Henderson Contributing Authors Marg and Stephen Naylor Dr Jonathan McBurnie Artwork documentation Photography by Michael Marzik Acknowledgement of Country Townsville City Council acknowledges the Wulgurukaba of Gurambilbarra and Yunbenun, Bindal, Gugu Badhun and Nywaigi as the Traditional Owners of this land. We pay our respects to their cultures, their ancestors and their Elders – past and present – and all future generations.

H A N N A H M U R R AY

EN TROPICANA

Foreword It is a pleasure to present Hannah Murray’s first major solo exhibition, Entropicana, in Perc Tucker Regional Gallery’s 40th year. We in the Townsville City Galleries team remain committed to our local artists and to helping deliver exhibitions and realise ambitions of our artists, helping wherever we can to usher in the next generation of practitioners. Hailing from the Burdekin and a long-time resident of Townsville, Murray has been exhibiting her work in galleries and selling her designs at maker markets and pop ups with increasing frequency over the last few years, and has been establishing herself as an artist to watch. Recent exhibitions at Umbrella Studio and Murky Waters (an artist-run studio and gallery Murray co-founded) have been increasing in sophistication and nuance. Murray has recently relocated to Cairns, an ideal access point for her visual and thematic interests.

Murray’s work belongs to a certain school of artists whose North Queensland experiences leave a clear and present impression upon the artist’s work, often in surprising ways. Artists such as John Coburn, Roland Nancarrow, Anneke Silver, Ian Smith, Sylvia Ditchburn, Ray Crooke and Robert Preston have all been directly influenced by the unique forms, colours and light of the tropics, and have explored these aspects in various ways. Murray’s fascination with plant life in particular conjures Nancarrow and Coburn’s forms, and her sense of colour, at once vivid and subtle, seems to both reflect and cut light, much like the diverse biological forms she draws, paints and collages.

Right from the outset, Hannah Murray’s Entropicana confronts us with a loaded proposition; death and decay always follow the flourishing of life, just as the flourishing of life follows death and decay. The tropical regions contain and support most life on Earth, both above and below water, and it is through this mass of life that vast, vital and expansive chains of energy extend beyond our region through migration and responses to fire, flood and drought, expanding and contracting.

Entropy is commonly misunderstood as a scientific term for energy death, but this is not quite correct. Entropy most often refers particularly to the law of conservation of energy, wherein the total energy of an isolated system remains constant, and the second law of thermodynamics, wherein it is predicted that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, but rather continues to be transformed or adapted through complex processes. The full process of life (including death and subsequent decay) supports both of these scientific laws, despite their differences. This may all seem a little abstract, but to put it into context, the Earth, moon and sun could be considered a closed system, and by that rationale, the increasing rate and intensity of natural disasters could therefore be considered the signs of entropy. So, rather than energy death, it could be argued that entropy (like the process triggered with death) is actually energy transformation.

I find myself drawn to Murray’s interest in the Japanese concept of Ukiyo. The term alludes to two separate but interlinked ideas. The first being the Buddhist use of the word, which connotes the earthly plane which Buddhists seek escape through transcendence and enlightenment. The term is also used ironically to imply the idea of sorrowful or fleeting pleasures; in other words, pleasures of the flesh. The other, Ukiyo-e, is a popular printmaking tradition that depicts such scenes, whereas Murray’s approach remains deeply rooted in both conceptual sides of Ukiyo. Life follows death follows life follows death.

When transposing the gravity of these ideas against the Tropicana and Exotica Murray is so often drawn to, the result is a delicious fusion of dark and light, the warm, the tropical light cut by the deep green and blue shadows it creates. These works are indicative of an aspect of life that is at once obvious and mysterious to us. Life and death are mysterious, and yet form the very framework through which we experience the world, yardsticks by which to measure life’s great joys and sorrows.

Dr Jonathan McBurnie Creative Director, Townsville City Galleries

EN TROPICANA A SEARCH FOR SOUL

There is a great power to be realised when the human mind is jolted out of its comfort zone, Hannah Murray seeks to achieve this through her cacophony of images that defy logic yet somewhere beneath the surface actually make sense. For many of the works in Entropicana the audience can discern mimetic rendering of exquisite plants native to the tropics and inorganic objects which have symbolic references which we carry in our minds as familiar icons.

Hannah’s probing of what it means to live and love in the tropics sits at the root of this exhibition. Her affinity with painting objects and her passion for the genre of still life is clearly realised in many of the works, however, it is what she does with these ‘chance encounters’ that is what makes this exhibition interesting.

As a studio artist, trained at James Cook University and one who has continued to be employed in the arts with experiences in both the gallery system and in education, Hannah has maintained her commitment to practice and the production of professional artworks. This commitment to practice ebbs and flows throughout her career pushing her deeper into an exploration of tropical space, as she seeks to probe the issues that are important to her. Her artist statement links social and environmental issues and references the history of art, but beneath the theory and philosophical positioning dwells a total commitment to artistic practice.

When one visits the artist’s studio, one is placed in the position of marvel. It is her Wunderkammer – a space she enters surrounded and confounded by objects, books, artworks in various stages of completion, sketches, experiments, but ultimately her studio is a womb. A place where ideas are conceived, tested, pushed, let stand, reworked and eventually resolved. This is a studio which enables Hannah to think, to contemplate and to create.

To take artworks from this furtive creative place and display them within the sanitised white cube of the gallery, often removes the passages of development, excitement, torment and the rush of adrenaline as works begin to find form - cementing ideas into images that can be shared beyond the studio. But there is that moment when the work has to leave its womb and be born in the public eye.

Visiting Hannah in her studio late in 2020 it was obvious the moments of doubt that invaded her psyche as deadlines loomed as the work was developing within its safe space, but with the anticipation of its imminent exposure constantly undermining the artist’s confidence. Despite the technical fluency which will delight audiences, there is always this reticence and insecurity that makes Hannah an artist worthy of public exposure. Despite the fluency there is a dark side, her works often remind us of icons, highly charged images with a power that exists between the objects within the picture plane. This energy between tropical floral emblems and inorganic objects such as shells, sets up a dichotomy, one which harks back to grand traditions of symbolic objects within a picture plane, reminiscent of the Dutch still life artists. For Hannah this vanitas exposes the mythology of the tropics - the cliché pleasure, colour and fecundity associated with ‘paradise’ which is often superficially presented for the consumption of those living outside of the tropics.

Whereas, Hannah Murray, a girl from Ayr, maintains commitment to North Queensland and knows full well that the tropics are far more than an advertising billboard.

Her sensitivities towards the plight of the tropics constantly envelops the works as we peer beyond the delicate petals of the frangipani, orchids and the tantalising leaf displays of the Alocasia and Dieffenbachia and hit the hard surfaces of Nautilus, Cypraea and Lambis.

Yet the figure ground relationship is ambiguous, as most works float within a paradoxical background. As we look beyond the obvious there is a nebulous state at play here, for what supports these beautiful iconic objects in terms of nourishment, protection or purpose?

Within this framework Hannah Murray draws back on the traditions within painting and image making, which draw the viewer beyond the surface. The ‘chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table’ (Lautréamont 1868) was the ultimate ambiguity celebrated by the Surrealists a century ago. The Surrealist Manifesto written by Andre Breton attempted to make what appeared to be a frivolous pursuit of virtuous painting into a way of creating a new reality for people to explore the world without the constraints of public conventions. The works presented within Entropicana attempt to go further and prick the consciousness of the audience into a state of play that is not quite right. We see beauty has a second side, for all things that bloom do ultimately wither and the moment of this realisation becomes the hinge between ‘what is and what will be’.

Hannah references the Japanese tradition of Ukiyo, or ‘floating, fleeting or transient world’, this admission seems ever so more poignant in 2021 with such technological advances to send devices into deep space, create machines that work at speeds and capacities far in excess of human capability, yet we continue to exploit the natural world that provides us with resources to survive. The spectre of the COVID 19 pandemic that rages through countries both rich and poor, developed and developing yet not discriminating against either is more than a metaphor for contemporary life. Is there a reference to the excesses of the new millennium, our wilful exploitation of the land and sea, our antipathy for enduring cultures and our inability to discern what is truly a need – and not merely a desire.

The works on display are not purely for pleasure and to satisfy the capricious gaze of the eager investor, they draw a line in the sand to encourage us to reflect on our tropical world and on the importance of artists and other creatives who draw attention to things that we may not notice in our everyday lives. Hannah’s work continues in the vein of the Dutch genre painters, still utilising those tricks of Trompe-l’oeil and investing the mythological energy that the Surrealists conjured with their juxtapositions of disparate objects but she does it within a frame of the 21st century where technology, commercial imperatives and a search for soul are all pervasive.

Marg and Stephen Naylor [Marg Naylor, James Cook University Art Collection Project Officer] [Professor Stephen Naylor, Chair Academic Board, James Cook University]

A dweller on the threshold of paradise 2021 Acrylic on board, 50 x 55 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

Tropical Philosophical – Ataraxia 2020 Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 42 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

A mantle of attainment 2020 Acrylic on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 83 x 115 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

A shadow on the surface fades into the moon 2021 Graphite on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 58 x 68 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Cantaloupe Island 2020 Mixed media on board, 45 x 54 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

Cast Adrift 2020 Acrylic on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 66 x 55 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Drifting Away 2021 Acrylic on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 57 x 72 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Floating World 2020 Graphite on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 66 x 55 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

High and dry 2021 Graphite on Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper, 33 x 41 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Jewel of the sea 2020 Acrylic on board, 50 x 60 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

More precious than gold 2019 Giclée print on Hahnemühle German Etching, 29 x 40 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Night Swim 2020 Acrylic on board, 50 x 60 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

Sweet disposition 2020 Acrylic on board, 50 x 60 cm Photography: Michael Marzik

The botany of desire 2019 Giclée print on Hahnemühle German Etching, 30 x 42 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Wash over me 2021 Graphite on Arches Aquarell watercolour paper, 33 x 41 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Sunshine state 2019 Mixed media on wallpaper, 21 x 30 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Leopard 2019 Mixed media on wallpaper, 15 x 21 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Tiger Moth 2019 Mixed media on wallpaper, 15 x 21 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Untitled 2019 Mixed media on wallpaper, 20 x 30 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

Galleries Team Dr Jonathan McBurnie Rachel Cunningham Erwin Cruz Jo Lankester Tanya Tanner Jonathan Brown Leonardo Valero Chloe Lindo Ashleigh Peters Michael Favot Wendy Bainbridge Veerle Janssens

Creative Director Senior Education and Programs Officer Senior Exhibitions Officer Collections Management Officer Public Art Officer Education and Programs Officer Exhibitions Officer Curatorial Assistant Education and Programs Assistant Exhibitions Assistant Gallery Assistant Gallery Assistant